Nadesico Fan Fiction ❯ Chasing the Darkness ❯ [10] Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Akito ( Chapter 10 )

PART TEN: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Akito

Akito's momentum continued even after they boson jumped, toppling them both backwards and to the ground. Yurika looked around at her surroundings; she took exactly two seconds to note that it figured he'd jump to the Nadesico A's kitchen before tightening her grip around his waist.

"I knew you'd come back, Akito!" she repeated, "I knew you didn't mean it when you said you were leaving! I understand about Lapis so you don't have to worry anymore..."

Akito detached himself gently and got to his feet. "You don't understand, Yurika." he said, moving towards the door.

"Oh, I understand, and I just want you to know that whatever it is, I'll wait until you're ready to tell me. You should know by now that I'll always wait for you, Akito!"

Akito stopped and turned around, staring at her quietly. What could he do with someone so completely dense? His feet seemed to know, because they moved him forward until he was standing over her. Then he bent forward on one knee and kissed her, cursing himself the entire time. None of this was going according to plan. Immediately, he remembered why he's stopped keeping up with a Day Planner.

He couldn't isolate himself from her now-- not with the Sixsome still at large. In all his futures, he'd killed at least two of them, putting them and their leader out of commission long enough to stop the Doomsday plan. But this time, Yoshio had interfered. Yoshio, who shouldn't have been there in the first place. He didn't know what it meant, but he wouldn't allow himself to think that anything else had changed. He hadn't wanted the certainty of knowing the future, but when it had been given to him he'd become remarkably reluctant to give that knowledge up. He was playing with people's lives and he wanted to be sure about what he was doing. He didn't want any more mistakes, like with Ai.

But by not fighting the Sixsome, he'd cemented the fact that all six of them would be around to try again. Until he could stop them permanently, he couldn't leave Yurika, or Ines for that matter, alone. But would he be able to stand being with her and not being honest with her?

He didn't know; and the only consolation he could think of as he took her hand to help her to her feet was that he didn't have a choice.

"Come on," he said, voice husky and flat, "We have to get out of here."

******

Ryoko was the first to notice that Akito was gone. She was also the first to notice, after her initial outcry, that Yurika was gone as well. She couldn't have explained what she felt then: betrayal, resignation... bitter anger as she realized that he'd deserted them and left them to take care of the Sixsome alone.

But another part of her rebelled from that-- Akito must know things the rest of them didn't, or he would never have left. That wasn't the type of person he was.

The middle-aged guy from before backed into her, trying to distance himself from the leader. Ryoko opened her mouth to yell at him, but his nerves already seemed shot and so she surprised herself by remaining silent. The Sixsome began to close in on him, but he drew himself up and defied them with more vehemence than she had expected.

"You really have no idea why I'm here, do you?" he demanded, and his tone was so commanding that the Sixsome stopped in apparent confusion.

Yoshio was taking a huge risk; he was making the gamble that the Sixsome's orders were only concerning the A-class jumpers and contained nothing about him. He was aware that he might very well be tossing out his only chance to finish his research on the Artifact, but enough was enough. He had to place his bets one way or another or he'd never get anything done. "Our leader is going to punish you for ruining my operation," he growled, and the fact that this was so unlike him made the rather pathetic attempt to sound dangerous more believable. "Getting the jumpers in full daylight in a public place is something Hokushin would have laughed down as idiocy. You shame him."

The leader scowled, baring his teeth, but Yoshio was finished.

"Go!" Not understanding where this adrenaline was coming from, he turned his back on the six (armed!) men and walked back to his booth in the cafe. "There is nothing for you here." he announced over his shoulder.

The leader hissed, then stepped back. "Jump," he said to his men, and they vanished.

******

Tsukai considered the situation and decided that now was not the time for any more speeches, seeing as his audience had disbanded. Instead, he turned to the chirpy brunette who was crouching against his box of Gekigangar stuff.

"Wow!" Hikaru was saying, "You have almost as much Gekigangar manga as Akito!"

"That's mostly Akito's stuff."

Hikaru stood up. "Really? I thought he had given up on Geki. Ever since..." she paused, not knowing how to continue. Depressing stuff just really wasn't her forte.

"You can never give up on a way of life for very long."

"That's good!" Hikaru said, whipping out her pen again. "You've got some great one-liners. What's your name, by the way, so I can make a dedication to you in my next doujinshi? You don't mind if I use your lines, do you?"

"Akarui Tsukai!" Tsukai struck his pose, but Hikaru ruined it by grabbing his hand and tugging him off down the street. He barely had time to grab the box and stuff it under his left arm.

"Hey, weren't you that pilot we were fighting before? How'd you get involved with the Successors anyway? You don't seem like the type who wants universal domination so it must be a personal vendetta of some sort..."

******

Saburota surveyed the wreckage of the coffeehouse and decided all in all that it wasn't a bad days' work. Plus there was still time to go to a video room and to call some of his girlfriends before he hit the clubs that evening. Speaking of clubs...

"Yoshio, my friend!" the blond Jovian declared, patting the shaking man on the back, "I didn't know you had it in you!"

Yoshio fainted.

******

"And don't come back until you can bring me the jumpers!" Aritomo shouted to the retreating figures, glaring at their backs until even their shadows disappeared. Then he sat down heavily and stared at the calendar at the corner of his desk. There was a big red box replacing a date, the letters "N-O" written angrily in black across it. 11 days away. They had eleven days get everything ready down to the last detail. And even the Sixsome seemed hopelessly incompetent at this point.

Though something the leader had said had made him stop and think. Tenkawa had known they'd needed the A-class jumpers. And he'd known to protect Misumaru Yurika. How? It was as if he'd known the future. Tenkawa Akito was incapable of running the Artifact; the only reason his capture had been called for was so he couldn't go around rescuing any more people. But perhaps he could be more useful...

******

Ines, Ruri, and Lapis sat in silence, each looking at their hands and not each other. Ines had managed to open the jump files, but in some way all three wished that she hadn't.

Every file they checked so far-- the first 114-- was a schematic for a boson jump 11 days into the future. They were almost identical, except for a few minute details in the coding that Ines didn't know how to decipher. Ines explained that programmers often put notes somewhere in the program to explain their function. In the case of the Artifact, the notes were at the end, and apparently pulled directly from Akito's mind. They all followed the same format. It listed a cryptic event, such as "Friendly Fire," "KO Base," or "Follow the Leader," followed by a list of names. Ruri was often listed, as was most of the crew of the Nadesico. Following the names in each file was one word: deceased.

"What do we do?" Lapis asked finally, as Ines flipped blankly through another file.

"We confront Akito." the blond said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"No," Lapis countered. "He won't tell us anything. He's afraid to. He's afraid for our safety."

Ruri looked up at her, wondering how long Lapis had known about Akito's fears. Known but hadn't guessed what he was afraid of.

"We have to let him know that we know." she explained to the younger girl. "If he's so afraid for our safety, he should stop trying to handle everything by himself. He's obviously taken great care to hide this from you as well."

Lapis ducked her head and said nothing.

"That does raise an interesting question," Ines commented. "How exactly did he keep all this a secret from you, Lapis? If you can read each other's thoughts..."

Ruri interrupted before Lapis had to. "It doesn't work that way. She only sees what he dreams, not what he thinks."

Ines looked shocked. "Really? I wasn't aware..."

"It's okay," Lapis blushed. "No one really knew how connected Akito and I are."

"Hmm..." Ines got that scrutinizing look again, and Lapis was almost positive she could see the gears in the woman's head turning.

"But..." Lapis stuttered in embarrassment, "We can't just do nothing..."

"We need to inform the military so they can be ready." Ruri remarked matter-of-factly. "We'll have to make a proposal to the JF council."

Ines sighed. "Then I suppose one of us will have to tell the crew."

"No!" Lapis said again, her head snapping up vehemently. "Let me talk to Akito. He should tell Yurika what's happening, not us."

Ines smiled kindly. "If it comes to that, Akito should be telling everyone himself. He's the one who's been holding it inside him for so long. There's been a breach of trust. It should be up to him to fix it."

Lapis nodded. "I'll talk to him. I want to help."

Ruri frowned slightly. That gave her an idea.

******

"This bites!" Atkins, the helmsman, complained. "It's not our fault all the chulips in this area were disabled."

Araragi, though he whole-heartedly agreed with the young officer, was busy being the diplomat. "It seems rather abrupt to call a battleship out of Mars space to a battle on Earth and then to send it back without doing anything."

"I apologize for the inconvenience," Admiral Fukube said kindly, "I'm aware that you had trouble getting here with all the chulips shut off, but the fact remains that the battle is over and we have no need of assistance from the Lilac. We thank you for your willingness to help, but it won't be necessary."

The admiral's window disappeared, promptly replaced by the automated docking monitor. "This ship is cleared for immediate departure." it chirped brightly.

"That's it, then," Araragi sighed. "Take us out, Atkins."

"If you'll please proceed to Hangar Three...."

"Just a moment, please," Ruri's face popped up and then disappeared again.

"The Lilac is cleared to--" the voice blipped and changed messages. "The Lilac is cleared to land at Pad 23. Please stand by." Araragi smiled brilliantly. She'd remembered them after all.

******

Minato must have opened and closed her mouth again without saying a word at least six or seven times by now. She wanted desperately to know what was going on and just as desperately wanted to forget the whole thing. The last time something like this had happened... she didn't want to think about it.

"You want to go shopping?" she blurted out suddenly, causing Megumi to snap out of her own reverie.

"What? Oh," the shorter woman frowned apologetically. "I can't, Minato, I'm going to lunch with Aiden in an hour. In fact, I should probably go start getting ready now."

"Oh," Minato echoed, "Well, all right then. I'll walk you back to the hotel, okay?"

As they changed directions, walking away from the shopping district and past the street where the coffee shop stood in silent mockery of her confusion, Minato shuddered. She knew only one person besides Akito who would explain what the Sixsome were doing, but she wasn't in a hurry to go see him.

******

"So you're going to put Lapis on the Lilac and send her off to the JF Council?" Ines asked Ruri after the latter finished changing the ship's flight plan.

"It's the best way," Ruri said, staring distractedly off towards the hallway which Lapis had disappeared down. "No one really knows that Akito is back, so we can send Lapis to the JF Council under the pretense of a debriefing and transmit our findings that way. If you or I were to go, our presence on the Lilac would be noticed and questioned. But Lapis is free to go where she chooses."

"Hmm," Ines said, scrolling down Akito's file list.

"Ms. Fressange..." Ruri began, "Just what happened in the future?"

Ines smiled grimly. "I heard over the radio link about several Successor attacks. The people down in the ruins with me were all evacuated. There was a call for all battleships to the moon. Then a series of earthquakes on Mars and several failed major boson jump attempts. After that, I don't really know. There were explosions and a lot of screaming. I couldn't seem to leave the ruins, probably because the me of that time was wandering around somewhere. The whole city began to glow, until the ruins began to look like Tokyo. And then..." she shrugged. "I ended up back here. Didn't really have a choice in the matter."

She left out one important detail, because she knew from reading classical literature that trying to dodge your fate often leads to bringing that fate to pass. Just before all the warships were called to the moon, one message had broken through the static and sliced clearly through the line, and through her. The Nadesico has been destroyed. All escape pods ruptured during the resulting explosion.

After a moment of silence in which it became clear Ines would not say anything else on the matter, Ruri got up to leave. She was planning to make arrangements for Lapis's passage on the Lilac, but first she needed to prepare something in the way of an official document to give Colonel Araragi.

******

Lapis wondered along the halls of the Nadesico, wondering if it had been wrong to lie to Ruri. It seemed almost strange that both Ruri and Ines, as brilliant as they were, would buy something so far-fetched. She and Akito could not communicate telepathically, no, but she wasn't limited to just seeing his dreams, which were often jumbled and indecipherable anyway. Her entire knowledge of the universe came from Akito's memories, which were also her own.

She wasn't really sure why she had lied in the first place, except maybe that it seemed like a betrayal to Akito to tell something so personal and so indescribable. Or perhaps she was embarrassed to tell Ines that she hadn't siphoned those memories of Doomsday, which should have been the most prominent of his thoughts, from Akito. Or maybe she was feeling guilty that she had so misjudged Akito. She had just assumed that the dark corner of his mind that he kept hidden from her contained his happy memories, ones he didn't want her to see. It never occurred to her that perhaps what he didn't want her to see was a future filled with more pain.

Or perhaps she was just pissed off that Akito hadn't shown her the future. Whatever the reason, she figured that while her lie was selfish, it wasn't hurting anyone. That decided, she could focus on finding Akito.

Not that it ended up being a difficult task; he was radiating turmoil. That meant one thing to Lapis-- he was with Yurika. Concentrating carefully, easing her way through their shared memories so he wouldn't know she was there, she figured out what had happened that morning and where the two had ended up. Then she turned around to go and meet them. She had wanted to talk to Akito alone beforehand, but with Yurika there she was almost positive the truth would come out. As an afterthought, she pushed gently at the dark area in Akito's mind that had eluded her knowledge for so long, only to find it completely impenetrable still.

******

"Captain!!!!" Harry yelled irritably, jumping around uncomfortably as he struggled to pull his pantleg free from where it had been caught in his boot. "What's the big idea?"

"Since we requested the Lilac's presence, it's only correct that we should meet them." Ruri murmured, patiently standing to one side of the landing area with Saburota at her side smirking like an arrogant bodyguard.

"I didn't request anybody's presence!" Harry protested loudly, twisting his overshirt around so the shoulder pads rested where they were supposed to. "What's going on? Why won't anyone explain anything to me?" He waved Lapis's vague note in Ruri's general direction.

"Maybe if you wouldn't oversleep so much you would know what was going on." Ruri commented quietly. Harry quit talking immediately, trying to decide if that had been an insult or a statement of fact. With the Captain he was never sure.

"So I hear you spent the night with that Lapis chick," Saburota chuckled suggestively. Harry's face flamed scarlet and his embarrassed gaze slid guiltily over Ruri's emotionless face before he rested the full measure of his fury on the taller man.

"It's not like that, you pervert! And her name is Lapis Lazuli, not 'That Lapis Chick,'" he yelled at the blond Jovian, "And what's your excuse for being late?"

"I was taking Yoshi to sick bay," Saburota grinned. "So Doc Erina can take care of him."

"Erina isn't a medical doctor." Ruri remarked as Harry said, "'Yoshi?'"

Saburota's grin got wider. Harry's lip curled but before he could say anything the crew of the Lilac began to arrive through the airlock. Three came down the ramp in the front, but the rest were pushed back into the ship by the ship's security officers. The not-so-fortunate crowded as closely as possible to get a glimpse of the electronic fairy.

"Lt. Commander Hoshino Ruri," the tall man in front said, taking her hand, "It's an honor to finally meet you face to face." He held her gaze a little longer than was necessary. Ruri felt her face getting hot. Quickly shaking the feeling away, she stepped back slightly and introduced Saburota and Harry. After the formalities had been dispensed with, the six stood in uneasy silence. Ruri was positive her face was bright red and was thoroughly confused with herself. Harry was sullenly glaring at the floor and trying to inch closer to Saburota so he could step on his foot, while the Jovian was sidestepping deftly. Colonel Araragi was busy thinking how pretty Ruri was and his two officers were just as smitten if not more so.

"I'm curious to know the details of this most interesting assignment," Araragi remarked when no one else spoke. "My ship has to be refueled before we can head back to the Council. Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner?"

"Smooth, Commander!" his first officer congratulated him, grinning proudly.

Ruri, who had just managed to stop blushing, flushed bright red once again. Harry's attention immediately focused on this new threat, who was standing there looking slightly embarrassed while he hit on the Captain.

"Who do you think you are, you...mmph!" he started shouting but was cut off when Saburota's arm snaked around and locked the younger boy in a headlock and covered his mouth in the same movement. Harry tried to bite him but couldn't free himself enough to achieve the desired effect.

"Dinner would be...fine," Ruri managed, regaining control of herself. This started a new round of muffled protests from Harry. Saburota grinned down at his jealous little prisoner. He'd have to take the kid to a club in a few years.

******

"Lapis!" Yurika said in surprise as they met the little girl coming around the corner. The former was a little breathless, having a hard time keeping up with Akito's quick pace in heels; but he had insisted that they get out of the area of their jump as quickly as possible. He had also been adamant that she not boson jump at all until he could get rid of the Sixsome. Yurika found it easier not to argue, so she concentrated on the anticipation of kissing Akito again. And after an unfortunate meeting with a dip in the road, she concentrated on not tripping.

Lapis nodded in acknowledgment of Yurika's greeting, but her attention was solely on Akito. Her usually blank golden eyes were fixed on his face with an intensity that Akito found strange and somewhat unnerving. "Akito, I have to talk to you," she said, leaving no room for argument.

"About what?" His uneasiness growing, he shot a quick glance in Yurika's direction.

"I'm going to be sent to the Joint Peacekeeping Forces Council on the Moon," she said slowly, "To report a highly classified discovery before any one governmental faction gets a hold of it."

Akito relaxed visibly. "Oh."

"Whose discovery?" Yurika queried.

"Ines Fresange and Hoshino Ruri," Lapis answered. She looked around as if she expected someone had sneaked up behind her, then turned back to Yurika and Akito. "They've discovered the schematics for boson jumping." Her focus returned to Akito. She could sense his fear growing again. Strangely enough, she felt a morbid sort of glee in building the suspense to make him uncomfortable. "They deciphered the codes for each jump and tested the theory on a cache of hidden files in Aiphis's memory."

"Aiphis...?" Yurika's confused look deepened. Akito stared quietly at Lapis, who stared back unflinching.

"How much..." he began haltingly.

"Everything," she answered.

"Ano..." Yurika looked back and forth between the pair, aware that she was missing something important and getting rather irritated by the fact.

"Tell her," Lapis ordered him. "You don't need to hide anything from us any longer!"

"It's better if..."

"It would be better if you'd stop thinking so much and just trust her."

"Lapis..." Yurika said kindly, "Akito knows that I support him. If he's not ready to tell me something, he doesn't have to."

"You should tell her the truth," Lapis ignored her, "Because if you don't then Ines and Ruri will. They're going to tell everyone about Doomsday if you don't do it first."

"Doomsday?" Yurika's eyes widened. "Akito..."

Akito relaxed again, though this time Lapis had no idea why.

"I trust Ines's discretion," he said.

And Lapis realized quite suddenly that Akito still knew something they didn't.

******

"Amazing," Ines whispered, glasses perched precariously on the edge of her nose. "Predictable, but still incredible." She hadn't meant to leave off her work with the Artifact for so long, but another thought had sprouted in her mind and wouldn't be quieted until the theory was proven. And now it was. And though her suspicions had been confirmed, she was still strangely unsatisfied.

A scratching noise near the door caught her attention. A young enlisted man stood uneasily in the entrance, shifting feet nervously and keeping a tight hold on the man beside him. Ines' eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. "Yes?"

"I was given orders to leave him with you." he pushed the older man forward. "Ms. Won's orders."

Ines frowned, but before she could protest she was left alone with Yamasaki Yoshio. He was probably the last person she ever wanted to be left with, and on top of that, she had no idea why she had been left with him.

"Why did Erina send you to me?" she asked coldly.

"Because you're the head of Nergal's boson jump research team." he answered sullenly. "And I'll be working under you."

"Over my dead body," the blonde snapped. Yoshio flinched visibly.

"But I'm sure that if we pool our knowledge we could discover everything about the Artifact..."

"So you could take my discoveries back to your Successor friends? I don't think so."

"I don't have Successor friends. I betrayed them."

Ines's frown turned into an angry smirk. "Betrayal seems to be one of your only talents."

"Ai, it wasn't my fault," he said sharply, moving forward until he was facing her directly. "I didn't want to leave you but I didn't have a choice."

"That's not the point." Ines looked away.

"I was fourteen-- I was on vacation with my parents, for heaven's sake! I had to go back to Earth and I couldn't take a strange magically appearing seven-year-old with me. Would you rather I left you wandering around the desert where I'd found you?"

"That's not the point!" she yelled, breathing deeply to try to calm herself. She didn't want to remember those first few weeks. She didn't want to think about it. "You betrayed everyone's trust when you became a Successor. And Erina may be willing to forgive you, but I am not so naive!"

"I went because they had the Artifact." he said shortly. "I'd poured most of my life into studying it, and I didn't care who had it as long as I could continue my work."

Ines looked at him closely. "We don't have the Artifact. The Successors do."

"The Successors also have a definitive lack of morals. It's been bothering me."

"You hooked Yurika up to the Artifact like she was some sort of computer chip!" Ines protested. "You were going to put me in there! And the Successors' morals bother you?"

"I wasn't going to put you in the Artifact." Yoshio sighed. "I didn't have a choice about most of what went on after the war ended; I had to put someone in there or they'd kill me and my family. I used Ms. Misumaru because she was the only one whose chemical makeup could handle it. I told them that the others wouldn't work, but Kusukabe hated Tenkawa and I think he wanted to drive your pilot crazy."

Ines blinked. "Wait... are you saying that Akito was used as a Human Imaging System as well?"

"Briefly. Their ultimate goal was to create a network of imaging systems and jumpers, all chemically connected, to boost the Artifact's power. But anyone they used as an imaging system became so unbalanced that they had to be replaced. Luckily for Tenkawa, Aritomo wanted him for a different experiment so he was removed before they had to commit him."

What is so big that they would need such a huge power source to jump it? Ines wondered uselessly. But there were more important matters to attend to. Namely, Akito's time as the Human Imaging System, when he would have access to an unlimited number of boson jump records. Yoshio's betrayal of everything good in the universe ranked right up there as well, and she wasn't going to let him forget it. "You were there." she accused him. "You were there while they messed with Akito's head."

"I didn't have a choice!" Yoshio almost screamed it. "Fear is a powerful motivator."

"And you're not afraid of them anymore?" Ines asked sweetly. He wasn't going to get her sympathy when he'd let them drive men crazy and turn a woman into a statue all in the name of progress.

"My wife is dead," he said flatly. "They can't threaten her anymore. And Nergal is keeping my daughter safe. So truthfully, Nergal has more leverage over me than the Successors do at this point."

Ines blinked twice. "I'm sorry," she found herself muttering. "I didn't know."

Yoshio shook his head. "I know you don't want to trust me, but I'm appealing to you as the 14 year old kid who gave you his lunch when he found you on Mars. We're going to have to work together if we want to stop the Successors from building their 'New Order.'"

Ines looked up sharply. "Tell me what happened after Akito and Yurika were kidnapped. Everything."

Yoshio hid his smile because their conversation was too solemn, but he knew he'd won.

******

Harry sat dejectedly in the hall outside of the Captain's chambers, clicking the toes of his shoes together with his shoulders hunched up in a miserable ball. The door was open, but with all the excited chattering coming from inside, Harry couldn't bring himself to go in.

"Ruriruri, this is so exciting!" Megumi exclaimed as she rummaged through Ruri's closet. Yukina, placing a fancy chopstick in Ruri's hair, stood back to admire her work. The white strands were perfectly coiled and shone quietly as the light from the vanity reflected off the intricate twists.

"Is all this really necessary?" Ruri murmured, her cheeks bright pink with embarrassment. Yukina's answer was to attack with eyeshadow and lipstick.

"Of course it's all necessary!" Megumi insisted, still digging through the closet. "It's your first date, after all! Is this all you have?" She pulled a frilly dress out to examine more closely. Ruri recognized it as the dress she had worn at Akito and Yurika's wedding.

"Megumi!" Yukina scolded. "It's a date, not a formal dance; isn't there something simple?"

Megumi went back to the closet. Ruri, flushing deeply, ducked her head. "It's not a date," she insisted.

"It's not?" Yukina asked in puzzlement. "It sure sounds like one."

"I'm supposed to be discussing arrangements for Lapis's departure over dinner."

Megumi stood up straight. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "It's one of those dates." She reached out and grabbed a black turtleneck minidress, laying it out on the bed. "This is perfect, then."

"'Those dates?'" Ruri echoed in confusion.

"One where you don't know if it's a date or not." Yukina explained. "I don't think you'll need any blush."

Ruri's flush deepened. "I don't think it's a date." she said again.

Megumi shrugged. "Well, there's one way to know. If he gives you flowers, it's a date. If he lets you split the bill, it's not a date."

"Oh."

Outside, Harry's dour face had developed a distinctively wicked grin.

******

"Doesn't it seem odd that we weren't informed that the girl's presence was required at the JF Council?" Akatsuki asked-- announced, actually. "Almost as if they didn't want us to know at all." Lapis remained silent, staring down at her feet. She hadn't wanted them to know at all, but of course Akatsuki made it his business to know everything. A JF ship couldn't just sit in his docking bay without attracting his notice. Too bad he and Erina had met up with Akito, Yurika and Lapis before she could reach the safe silence of the ship. For the first time since its destruction, Lapis wished for the stillness of the Eucharis, which was secure and quiet if not particularly homey.

Akatsuki looked down at Lapis expectantly, but she continued to stare at the floor, as if concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other. In spite of himself, Akito was proud of her for not losing her calm. However unworthy Akatsuki was, Lapis idolized him just as she idolized everyone else on the Nadesico. But she took her mission very seriously, and said nothing.

Akatsuki's half-smile turned down slightly, but he was undaunted. "Obviously they wish to know everything they can about the Successors, but surely Tenkawa would have a clearer memory of such things than a little girl?"

"Akatsuki," Akito snapped, "Shut up."

And surprisingly, he did. It shocked him-- he had never once bowed to the pilot's will before, not really, and yet for some reason the thought of becoming his enemy now filled Akatsuki with dread. Not fear, but incredible impatience at the thought of going up against Akito.

"It doesn't matter," Erina said coldly. In matters of pride, she had limitless patience and a capacity for malice almost as big. She would be quiet for no one but herself, no matter the consequence. "We're here."

The Lilac nestled snugly in the corner of the launch bay, waiting to be refueled. Lapis clutched her small knapsack tightly. Yurika had insisted that they help Lapis get settled in for her journey, and though Akito was less than pleased, he seemed too tired of arguing to resist much. It would be a long and tedious trip, because the Lilac would not be utilizing any chulips. It would not be wise to call attention to the ship, especially when the Successors controlled the Artifact. Lapis would be on the ship for 14 days, the longest period of time she had spent away from Akito's side that she could remember. The thought frightened her much less than she would have expected, but she was glad that Akito and Yurika were there. It would keep Akatsuki and Ms. Won from asking her too many questions. She didn't like to hide things from anyone-- it was hard to do.

"Lapis Lazuli," said a quiet voice. She looked up to see an aging man in Admiral's garb standing before her. "I'm Admiral Jackht." He pronounced it like "Yacht."

"Hello," Lapis said, gripping her bag tighter.

Admiral Jackht smiled kindly. "Would you like me to show you the ship?"

Lapis glanced up at Yurika, who smiled encouragingly, then turned back the Admiral and nodded.

******

"That's really all I know." Yoshio said, spreading his hands apologetically. Ines closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "I really haven't a clue what Tenkawa discovered how to do inside the Artifact-- I can only speculate."

"Does anyone else know that's all you know?"

"No," Yoshio looked extremely puzzled; Ines smiled to reassure him, but she looked dreadfully agitated herself.

"Thank you." Now she had another task to complete in a very short period of time. If her suspicions were correct, and she was sure they were, then there wasn't a whole lot of time for her to prevent someone's death. Yoshio had provided a way for her to confront Akito and inform the crew of their danger, without waiting for Lapis to report to the JF Council. In fact, she didn't need to mention boson jump schematics at all.

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